Issue Opening Excel Documents - little black icon in front of Excel icon

[archangelsuprem]

Hello everyone, newbie here

I'm trying to open a file on a network drive...but I'm getting the following error message when it opens:

"This file may be read-only, or you may be trying to access a read-only location. Or the server the document is stored on may not be responding."

Now, the file itself has no rights restrictions and is not read only. It doesn't appear to be locked.

Now, there are other Excel files in the same directory which I could open fine; however, the Excel documents having the above problem all have a little black icon "appears to be a padlock" (image attached) at the bottom left hand side of the Excel file icon.

I tried the following:

- Renaming
- Converting to a different file format (didn't work, it won't let me)
- Opening in notepad...etc doesn't work.

This file is dated back in 2004...do you think it's corrupt? Is there anything i can do to open or recover this?

Thanks for your help.

[starguy]

Hi

make a search on google for this error you will find many links explaning this error message.